What desire paths teach us about UX design
Lets users shape your product.
What are desire paths?
Desire paths simply take one from point A to point B. These are alternate routes taken by people instead of the built path because they are more convenient. Over time, a new “desire path” is created different from the one actually designed.
The guys at roro.io describe it well in design terms. Desire paths represent traces of use or wear that indicate preferred interaction done by users with an object or environment.
What do desire paths tell us?
Desire paths highlight a certain paradoxical nature of human behaviour. You may be skeptical of what you’re about to read or it may not make much sense in the beginning, but I promise you it all comes together. So, keep reading.
At one end, we value situations and achievements more when there has been a considerable amount of effort and sweat gone into them, and on the other hand, we prefer the more mundane activities of our life to be easier. Think of yourself or your friends as examples. You may go above and beyond at work to deliver a successful project, spend hours at the gym with a torturous regime or trek a long arduous trail just to witness a few minutes of a beautiful sunset. You may even know a friend who spends hours solving a crossword puzzle instead of looking up the answers. We are driven by a certain motivation to be among the best and the result births an immense sense of satisfaction.
On the other hand, when it comes to the more banal parts our day, our behaviour is governed by convenience and we like to take the path with the least resistance. We are inherently lazy users and prefer products, services and systems that are easy to use and with minimum effort.
Researchers call this the paradox of effort and desire paths are a whimsical representation of this. They reflect this dual human desire; one for discovery by forging a new path and the other for simplicity by forging a quicker path.
Desire paths and UX
User Experience design is about understanding the complexities of human behaviour, their needs and capabilities and keeping them at the core of our designed experiences. I spoke in detail about how desire paths reflect aspects of human behaviour to emphasise that there are clues all around us in our environments that help us understand people’s intentions and needs. All we have to do is look objectively.
A desire paths shows us what people prefer in terms of effort or time over what was provided to them.
This highlights two important design actions that if we include in our process, can help us be better designers.
To discover user’s intent and desires, start with observing how they behave
Start your design process with observation. If we observed people before designing and building pathways, we’d be able to see what routes are most convenient and used often. We can then design solutions based on this information. This way we truly serve the needs of our users and give them solutions that have real value for them.
Walt Disney, as we all know, was no stranger to creative thinking. When building Disneyland, he encouraged his designers and engineers to be on the ground, interacting with the public to understand them better. He watched his visitors navigate through the park and as they made their way around, they left behind trails. Most of these trails were away from the built paths and cut through the grassy areas. When his engineers suggested to erect fences to keep them off the grass, he gave them a different perspective. — These trails revealed the paths of least resistance that people found easiest to take. He had them paved instead.
Walt Disney understood the importance of human centred design early on. John Hench, late Creative Director at Disney tells us more of such amazing stories of what went behind the scenes in his book, Designing Disney. I found it inspiring.
Desire paths have become a metaphor for uncovering user’s intent and needs and transforming them into enjoyable and useful digital experiences. As UXers, our practice is founded on this philosophy of human centred design, and to truly understand the desires and potential of people, we learn to observe. Observation shows us valuable facets of human behaviour that even people are unaware of. Most often, people are unconscious of their own needs or even challenges, and observation helps us uncover them. We then use these insights to fuel our design process.
Observation can happen in many ways. Like Disney, you may choose to observe your users from a distance to understand their behaviour better, or you may choose metrics to observe their digital habits. It doesn’t matter what methods you adopt, but it is important to retain an unbiased stance.
Pay attention to how your products are being used
The feedback you receive from actual customers who use your products is critical in the long run. Paying attention to how your products are being used can give you valuable insights on what to improve for the future of your design.
Desire paths represent these opportunities for improvement. When you release a product, users leave desire paths all over them. They discreetly give you feedback on whether they are using the product the way you anticipated. Applications like Hotjar show you how users navigate through your product. Google Analytics can tell you about the most popular and least used features of your application. If you have a search bar, you can tell what users look for most often or have trouble finding. Learn from them to improve future interactions.
In this example you see below, the designer took the opportunity to convert the desire path into a usable built walkway.
While this may not be the best execution, it shows us a valuable lesson.
Designers should embrace the desire path and let the user shape the interaction.
Especially after our products have shipped, we must observe, learn and work on paving the desire paths users have left behind.
Embracing desire paths in our products.
One of our main goals as UX or digital designers is to increase the usability of our product and reduce the interaction cost.
The interaction cost is the sum of efforts, both cognitive and physical that a user must deploy in interacting with a platform in order to reach his/her goals.
When users land on your site, application or service, they use cognitive efforts to look for information on what path to take. Physical effort involves navigating through your platform, the clicks it takes to achieve their goals or the visual interaction involved.
As described before, a desire paths shows us what people prefer in terms of effort or time over what was provided to them. We can reduce interaction cost by making it simple and intuitive for users to perform their desired tasks. By starting with observation, and learning from feedback time and time again, we can bring our designed paths closer to users’ desire paths. As that disparity between the two keeps getting smaller, we inch one step closer to building a more successful and valuable product for our users.
Major Takeaways
To conclude, I’d like to summarise the big takeaways from this article.
- Observe user behaviours before you frame your design challenge. They will help you uncover real issues and show you users’ intent and desires.
- Get feedback from your users and let them shape the interactions of your product. Pay attention to their habits and use tools to measure how they interact with your digital experience.
- Use the insights you get from observation and feedback to improve your future iterations. The goal is to close the gap between our paths designed in anticipation and users’ desired paths.
